Tiny Irreversible Snags
by Crisium
Summary: A collection of DA2 short fics, only loosely related and in no particular chronological order. Multiple pairings, including Hawke/Anders and Hawke/Fenris, with more probable in the future.
1. Stay

_From LJ, a response to part of the prompt: "Poor Ser Pounce A Lot, he was forced to be given away to a 'friend'. I'm going to theorize this friend was 'Dog'."_

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"And here," Anders says, and Dog doesn't know why he smells of tears and salt and something else, something like-and-not-like Justice but Justice had gone. "There's milk out in the training hall but you'll have to make sure the maids refill it, will you?"

Dog whines, worried. The cat keeps trying to cling to Anders' arms, claws catching in the fabric and leaving tiny irreversible snags, and Anders pushes him away almost too gently to make a difference. "No. I can't…" His voice breaks, a quiet tired thing, and the cat's bell chimes gently in the night as he struggles to climb into his human's arms and Anders tries to stop him. "I _can't_ take you."

"Mraow?"

"No," Anders says, firmer, and then reaches out to pet the top of Dog's head, a tentative gesture. "Stay with Dog."

"Mraow?"

"No."

But the cat is as good at listening as any cat and so doesn't pay a human's _no_ any attention at all—and this is wrong, Dog thinks, this is the middle of the night and people don't _leave_ in the middle of the night, not alone and smelling of fear and tears and vanished spirits. The cat scales Anders' body, tail lashing, to curl into the spot at the junction of his neck and shoulder, and Anders doesn't tell him no again. The orange fur sticks up in tufts between his fingers as he holds to the cat, face turned into his fur, and Dog whines lowly because this is wrong, very wrong, and there isn't anyone to stop it.

"I would if I could," Anders whispers, thick through fur and a strange wild grief. "But the new Warden-Commander—"

Dog whines, not liking this at all.

"No." And Anders bumps his mouth against the top of the cat's head, a short negligent kiss-thing of the kind Dog knows well—and then he tucks the bundle of cat against Dog's side one more time, and goes. The little bell chimes like _goodbye_ into the dark empty night, and they never see Anders again.


	2. Change

The immutability of the mortal world is a terrible shock.

Justice masks his unease at first as best he can, accompanying the small collection of Wardens in their efforts against the darkspawn, watching their slow and futile efforts break like waves against a mountain. It takes time to carry out their mission, the Warden tells him, but time is a foreign construct and Justice feels its press severely.

He does not sleep and cannot rest, and so he passes the long hours of the night in watch, every second that ticks by like the ponderous grinding of some gargantuan dwarven machinery. Their cause would be simpler to carry out in the Fade. The Wardens could seek out the darkspawn and overcome them through force of will, parting through the myriad obstacles of time and stone and ability to simply _do_ what must be done.

It is an eternity before the Architect finds them, another eternity before the Wardens find the Architect, a _hundred_ eternities of futile striving before the darkspawn menace goes quiet. Justice feels the mortal world thicken around him by the moment like sap around an insect, petrifying him in place, changing him by the hour.

Kristoff's body crumbles. Absent the cause of darkspawn to fight Justice turns his attention to the nearest injustice at hand, to Anders' bloody-edged torment.

No denizen of this world could solve the problem. It becomes clearer with every endless day that passes that action must be taken, that centuries of systematic oppression cannot stand.

Perhaps this is his true purpose in the mortal world, Justice thinks sometimes. Trapped within their colorless immutable world, mortals cannot be expected to know better, cannot be faulted for being blind to the tools at hand.

It becomes a purpose:

He will open their eyes.

He will show them change.


	3. Bound

_Fenris/M!Hawke_

* * *

Fenris has a moment's uneasiness on the steps of Danarius' mansion, second-guessing as he thumbs the edge of the scarlet band. Perhaps this is a mistake, like so much had already been, a mark he isn't wholly prepared to bear. The pilfered crest on his hip is just weighty enough to be a constant reminder of its presence, not quite a gift, not quite a declaration.

But in the mid-morning sunlight there isn't time to back down. Varric's lips twitch mutely at the sight of him and Isabela snorts, eyes rolling, and Fenris glances to Hawke, in case this idea was as disastrous as he's beginning to suspect, too soon and too audacious.

Hawke doesn't notice, but then Hawke is watching Merrill, halfway up the wall of the estate.

It takes a minute's cajoling and still Merrill only comes down when she's ready, bare toes curling around vines and in cracks in the mortar, lighting on the street with a sideways hop. "What kind of finches would build a nest there?" she demands, too worried for real censure.

"They'll be _fine_," Hawke insists, apparently not for the first time. And then he does notice the changes, eyes lingering along Fenris' wrist, sliding across to the crest on his hip, a might-be-smile playing along the line of his mouth. "Fenris."

"Hawke."

Hawke grins and says nothing, and Fenris follows as ever, newly bound and newly weighted by choice as much as by tokens or crests.


End file.
